Ah, the joys of raising a teenage son. They’re moody, they’re smelly, and yes, much to our chagrin, they’re definitely aware of sex. That is partly why a mom is now in a really weird situation after her 19-year-old son asked for help with his bathing suit region and now won’t stop talking about masturbation. Um, yeah, if it sounds uncomfortable, it sorta is, and people in the comments section had some strong opinions on how to handle this very open teen.
The Original Poster is a single mom — meaning she was left to figure out this recent parenting problem all on her own.
As she explained, she had just gotten back from work when she heard something in her son’s bedroom.
“I found him on the floor grabbing his stomach. He seemed to be in a lot of pain,” she recalled in a since-deleted post on Reddit.
The mom asked her son if he was OK, to which he told her his “balls hurt.”
The OP freaked out and asked her son if it ever happened before.
“He said it happened once a few months ago and it went away after a while,” she shared. “I asked him if I could take a look and he undid his pants.”
As far as she could tell, everything looked fine down there.
She asked her son to show her the exact spot where it hurt, and after doing some quick searching online they realized that elevating his leg would help the pain go away — ”and it did!”
Once the pain went away, the OP helped her son into a bath and asked her son a delicate question: Had he been sexually active?
He assured her that he was still a virgin but told her that he hadn’t done “it” in a month — which in this case we're pretty sure means polishing the old wooden bannister — and said that it was probably “blue balls.”
At that point the conversation took a weird turn, even for the OP, so she told her son to “take care of it later” and left it at that.
She also scheduled an appointment with a urologist, “but in the meantime I asked him to keep me updated.”
And boy oh boy, did he!
The next day the OP asked her son if he was feeling OK, to which he said “and I quote ‘I burst a huge load and it feels better.’”
It was a little TMI for his mom.
But then things got worse.
“He has been giving me an update every time he does it for the past month,” she explained. “He's also been asking a lot more questions about sex.”
The mom guessed that her son now felt like he was now free to talk about sex and masturbation with her.
“While I think that it's good to be open about such things, I don't want this to turn into an unhealthy habit,” she added.
She also made it clear that “He wasn't hard when I examined him. So I don't think this was premeditated. Neither has he tried anything touchy all this time."
People in the comments had thoughts about the *ahem* sticky situation.
Some people offered advice, with one commenter sharing this:
"Have you perhaps considered gently saying to him the next time he brings it up, 'son I'm so glad you feel you can talk to me about things, and if there's ever something wrong or bothering you, you absolutely can but I don't need the little updates so how about keep that to yourself unless you have an issue? I love you, I'm glad things are better and I'm proud you can talk to me about this though.'"
"Sit him down and tell him you were worried about him, still are, but it's not appropriate for him to keep talking about it that way," another commenter wrote. "He's not a kid, he's 19, he would get the message. If he isn't, something is seriously off."
A third person warned the mom it could be something serious.
"May want to be careful it’s very common for guys within that age to get something called testicular torsion!! My son had to have surgery because of it and he could end up losing his testicles if you let it go. The pain is not constant and it can flip back around but I’d set I’ll get it seen about. About everything else I mean sex and masturbation is natural and you shouldn’t make him feel bad about it. Let him know that you don’t need to know about it though lol."
Other people thought it was so weird they were convinced the letter had to be fake.
"The fact that she didn’t call a Dr makes me think it’s a troll. Seriously, what parent sees their kid screaming in agony and doesn’t immediately want to get them help?" one commenter wondered.
"I can’t think of any scenario where a 19-year-old drops his pants for his mom without vehemently insisting to go to the doctor first," another commenter agreed.
"As a parent of grown sons, I would have taken him for medical assistance that first day," a third person chimed in. "I find her asking to see his scrotum as a boundary that shouldn't have been crossed, maybe I'm the odd one but cant imagine a circumstance where I'd ask a male child over a certain age to let me inspect his genitals. There arent a lot of home remedies for male genitals, so what was she gonna do for it?"
The mom finally got her chance to nip this in the bud after her son casually mentioned that he was going to “study for a while and then rub one off.“
In an update to her post, the mom shared how she finally laid down the law.
"Well, about that sweetie," she told him, "I know that I asked you to talk to me and keep me updated about your pain. I'm glad I could help you at your time of need. I really mean that. But I don't really need to know when you masturbate.
"It's private business," she continued. "Now I'm not saying that masturbation is wrong. I can understand that at your age you need to do it. Have fun. But just, you know, keep me out of it. You wouldn't tell me when you pee and poop, would you?"
Admittedly, her last request embarrassed her son, who mumbled that he thought it was OK to share these updates with her.
“He also felt "liberated" expressing such things,” she explained.
So the mom tried a heart-to-heart speech again.
"I probably didn't word that right when I said it,” she told him. “I'm sorry for the confusion. I don't mean to hurt you. All I'm saying is that you can talk to me about sex, masturbation, and relationships but WITHOUT oversharing. You can come to me if you have any problems. But as long as you're being safe, I really don't have to know anything about what you do behind closed doors."
The two hugged it out, and ever since their talk he hasn’t mentioned his solo time again.
But there was one last lingering issue to take care of. “We visited the urologist and the scans indicate that a varicocele surgery is required,” she wrote. “We'll be getting that done soon. Thanks for all the advice on how to handle this situation.”
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